Hoedowns, moonshine, toothless grins and The Beverly Hillbillies theme song.
It's what comes to mind for many when they think of the banjo. But Jayme Stone never made those associations. When he first picked up the five-stringed, round-bodied instrument at the age of 16, he immediately recognized its range and versatility. That's one of the reasons he was so drawn to it.
"It can be both a melodic and rhythmic, an accompanying and a lead instrument. It has a mercurial quality, it can weave in and out of the music and play a lot of different roles," says the two-time Juno Award winner who performs this weekend at CelticFest. "I really like the quirky physics of the banjo," he adds, "the highest and lowest strings are next to each other and it's tuned to an open tuning."
The banjo resurfaces time and again in popular music, Stone says, from ragtime to early jazz, and from oldtime bluegrass to modern compositions, like those by renowned American banjo player Béla Fleck — one of Stone's early musical heroes.
"Those trails had already been blazed. It was already perfectly clear to me that you could play any kind of music on the banjo. And so I didn't start with any hillbilly stigma, I never had it pigeon-holed," he says. "I could just take up the banjo as a musical instrument that had a unique camber and a unique history that I could draw from or leave and forge my own path, so I've tried to do both of those things."
Stone lives in Boulder, Colo, though he is originally from Toronto and finished high school in Vancouver (where he happened to discover the banjo). To date, he has released four albums, most recently 2013's The Other Side of the Air.
Stone will return to his old stomping grounds for the 10th anniversary edition of CelticFest Vancouver, which runs until March 16, where he will present Jayme Stone's Lomax Project, a celebration of the work of famed folklorist and field recording pioneer Alan Lomax. The Lomax Project is a collaborative effort featuring roots musicians Eli West (voice, guitar, bouzouki), Moira Smiley (voice, accordion), Brittany Haas (fiddle, voice) and Joe Phillips (bass), who have been working together to revive, recycle and re-imagine some of the traditional folk music Lomax recorded over the course of 60 years. The repertoire includes sea shanties from the Bahamas, African American a cappella from the Georgia Sea Islands, ancient Appalachian ballads and fiddle tunes gathered in prisons and plantations.
Stone says he has long been interested in using field recordings in his own compositions. In 2007, for example, he traveled to Mali to explore the banjo's African roots and created an album, Africa to Appalachia, based on West African melodies.
He first discovered Lomax around the same time he started playing the banjo.
"I've been aware of Lomax's work and it slowly dawned on me how many things that I actually play and love were first recorded by him, even if they've been done by other people," he says.
So, he gathered a group of musicians together to put their own spin on Lomax's vast collection of recordings.
"It allowed us to hone in on some specifics, and at the same time it's such an enormous collection and there's so much that it's just a kind of endless wellspring of things," he says. "I feel like I've sort of fallen down the rabbit hole and I'm still reeling and reveling in how much incredible music he captured — I mean, he collected songs for 60 years."
Because of the tremendous amount of material to draw on, and because Stone works with a different constellation of people on every tour, he says his performances at CelticFest Vancouver will be slightly different than anything he's done before.
"It's a way to keep things fresh and to get to work with many of my favourite musicians," he says. "We don't do the same songs each time.
Lomax Project Performance times and venues:
March 14, 8 p.m. CelticFest Vancouver 10th Anniversary Gala, Vogue Theatre
March 15, noon, 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 3 p.m. Tom Lee Music, City Stage (workshops with band members)
March 15, 8 p.m. CelticFest Ceilidh, Vancouver FanClub
March 16, 2-3 p.m. Mahony & Sons Music Stage, Celtic Village
Details at celticfestvancouver.com.
